Barack Obama : No sackings over plane bomb

He believes the security lapses that led to the near-disaster were not the fault of a single individual or institution, and the president said ultimately he is responsible for national security.

Mr Obama confirmed that the government had the information to prevent the botched attack, but failed to piece it together.

He announced a range of changes designed to fix that, including wider and quicker distribution of intelligence reports, stronger analysis of them and new terrorist watch list rules.

He added: "When the system fails, it is my responsibility."

His remarks were delayed twice as officials scrambled to declassify a report on the failures.

The unclassified six-page summary of the report given to the president stated that US intelligence officials had received unspecified "discrete pieces of intelligence" to identify Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, a Nigerian, as an al-Qaeda operative and keep him off the plane.

Officials received fragments of information as early as October, according to the report.

According to the report, "a series of human errors" occurred, including a delay in the dissemination of a completed intelligence report and the failure of CIA and counterterrorism officers to search all available databases for information that could have been tied to Abdulmutallab.

Meanwhile, a senior Yemeni official confirmed that Abdulmutallab was recruited by al-Qaeda while a student in London.

"The information provided to us is that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab joined al-Qaeda in London," Rshad al-Alimi, Yemen's deputy prime minister for defence and security, said yesterday. He also said Abdulmutallab had met the Muslim preacher Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, referring to an English-speaking cleric linked to an American major who shot dead 13 people at a US army base in Texas in November.

Abdulmutallab was indicted on Wednesday by a US grand jury on six counts. Charges against him include the attempted murder of the 290 people on board the plane and the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

The suspected bomber studied at University College London (UCL) from September 2005 to June 2008 and was president of its Islamic Society in 2006-7.

Some sources have described the Islamic Society as a vehicle for peaceful protest against the actions of the UK and the US in the war on terrorism, yet during Abdulmutallab's tenure as its president, along with political discussions, the club conducted activities such as martial arts training and paintballing.

During one of the society's paintballing trips, a preacher reportedly said: "Dying while fighting jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise."

UCL has said there was no evidence to suggest that Abdulmutallab was radicalised while he was there.

UK officials, responding to the Yemeni statement, said they still believed that his recruitment took place in Yemen.